The findings of a confidential report, commissioned by the government and accessed exclusively by The Hindu , have revealed that allocated expenditures of social spending programmes are not reaching intended users and confirm leakages due to corruption.
The capitation fees collected by private colleges, on management quota seats in professional courses, last year was around Rs 5,953 crore, the report estimates. Generation of black money in transfer of real estate properties is conservatively estimated at a staggering Rs 5,68,879 crore. If this could be plugged, India could almost double its Plan spending. Total Plan expenditure allocated by this year’s budget is Rs 5,75,000 crore.
For the decade 2001-2010, the average unaccounted income from minerals as a percentage of GDP is 10.32 per cent. This estimate excludes illegal mining and will be higher on accounting for that.
In 2009-10, almost 33 per cent of PDS off-take of kerosene or 3.87 billion litres was diverted for non-household uses. In 2011-12, Rs. 11,910 crore unaccounted incomes arose out of use of PDS kerosene as the adulterant for diesel.
The report finds that just 1.8 per cent of registered legal professionals file tax returns, including just 6.7 per cent of registered chartered accountants, 42.8 per cent of registered medical professionals and 35.2 per cent of nursing homes.
It includes a survey of 72 senior income tax officials on the sectors with high propensity to generate black money. The respondents considered the capital gains on real estate as the most important source followed by large-scale manufacturing, film industry, smuggling and under/over invoicing of foreign trade.
The study reports a discernible decline in percentage terms in the black economy post-1991 though in absolute terms it is still large. The foreign direct investment route is being used for taking black money out and bringing it back into India, the report finds. In 2011, unrecorded foreign assets worth $89,190 million were accumulated in India.
